Free Finding Zero by Amir D. Aczel Page B

samples of it can be taken for radiocarbon analysis—which could reveal its actual age with excellent accuracy—and so we still cannot tell how old it is. Many scholars believe, based on linguistic and textual analysis, that it was created between the eighth and twelfth centuries CE, while others place it much earlier, anywhere from 200 BCE to 300 CE. But without radiocarbon analysis, it is not possible to date it definitively.
    The manuscript contains a wealth of mathematical writings, from early equations to ways of estimating square roots to the uses of negative numbers. Most importantly, the Bakhshali uses a symbol for zero. If it could be dated to the second or third century, or even the fourth, it would establish that zero—and with it our entire number system—was invented very early in India. Should the British authorities ever allow a simple, hardly invasive procedure to be undertaken, in which a tiny amount of the bark is analyzed in a radiocarbon lab, we would know the real age of this extremely important artifact. Until then, the date of the most important Indian artifact in the history of mathematics remains very doubtful.
    The British scholar G. R. Kaye was the first person to study the Bakhshali, at the start of the twentieth century, and he concluded that it was no older than the twelfth century. Therefore, he could argue for a European or Arab origin of our number system. He wrote, “The orientalists who exploited Indian history and literature about a century ago were not always perfect in their methods of investigation and consequently promulgated many errors . . . According to orthodox Hindu tradition, the ‘Surya Siddhanta,’ the most important Indian astronomical work, was composed over two million years ago!” 6
    Kaye clearly dismissed the research of Moritz Cantor, Louis Karpinski, and others who like them believed that the numbers and the zero originated in India. He continued in his article with a scathing attack on all who argued that our numbers come from India and mocked Indian date estimates, including those for the Bakhshali that placed it at an early era. His article continued, “In the sixteenth century CE, Hindu tradition ascribed the invention of the ‘nine figures with the device for places to make them suffice for all numbers’ to ‘the beneficent creator of the universe’; and this was accepted as evidence of the very great antiquity of the system!” 7
    While I did not know it at the time, Kaye would play a major role in my story. In the meantime, working under the assumption that the zero—the key to our entire number system—was an Eastern invention, I asked myself why this was so, and inexorably I had to link it with the unique logic that I perceived in Asia. My thesis was that the number system we use today developed in the East because of religious, spiritual, philosophical, and mystical reasons—not for the practical concerns of trade and industry asin the West. In particular, nothingness—the Buddhist concept of Shunyata—and the Jain concept of extremely large numbers and infinity played paramount roles.
    The earliest zero in India is found in the city of Gwalior southeast of Agra, famed home of the Taj Mahal. Gwalior’s history is steeped in legend. In 8 CE, Suraj Sen, the ruler of Madhya Pradesh, contracted a serious illness and was about to die. He was cured by a hermit named Gwalipa, and in gratitude, Sen founded a city and named it after the man who had saved his life. Gwalior has many temples built over the centuries, and it has a famous fort whose defense played a role in many conflicts throughout Indian history. The fort was almost impenetrable; it stands on a high plateau in the middle of the modern city, rising sharply to 300 feet above its surroundings. This made it very hard for enemies to reach it and breach its walls. In a Hindu place of worship called the Chatur-bhuja temple—“the